


Where Often Is Heard a Discouraging Word

by executrix



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-01
Updated: 2014-07-01
Packaged: 2018-02-07 01:46:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1880433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/executrix/pseuds/executrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A vignette about the newly assembled crew in early S1...with one major difference.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where Often Is Heard a Discouraging Word

The fire Blake built crackled brightly. "How'd you learn how to do that, Blake?" Vila asked, and I must say I was surprised by his woodcraft skills myself.

"When I was a kiddie, my parents often sent me to spend holidays with my Uncle Ushton, on Exbar," he said. 

"Alphas, eh?" Vila said. "Spent lots of summers in quod meself, but it wasn't Mum that sent me there."

Despite the principles of the Freedom Party, I confess that I was still rather uneasy with the Upper Grades. There were a few of what poor Foster called "hovercar liberals" in our ranks, but of course we recruited primarily from the Labor Grades. Which made it all the more ironic that my only real ideological victory was recruiting Blake. Most of the poor devils insisted on staying on Cygnus Alpha instead of coming with us. "How are you getting on with those, Avon?" I asked. 

He looked up from the small computing device he had brought with him from the ship. "The closest match I can find for these…. _things_ " (he meant the animals Blake had snared)…"is rabbits, so I'm butchering them accordingly." 

"Well, hurry up," I said. "It's supper we want, not an autopsy report." Funny how things work out. If that computer technician hadn't cleaned Avon's clock so thoroughly, perhaps the plan to take over the London's computer room would have succeeded, and I would have been able to liberate all of my fellow-prisoners. But then we would never have been able to board that alien ship—or, as we called it now, the Evgeny Djargo. Pity that on the Djargo's maiden voyage to Cygnus Alpha only Blake and Vila had agreed to join us.

Jenna came back with one of the plasteel folding cauldrons from the ship, now half-filled with native vegetation. Vila poured on some of the water he'd gathered in another cauldron and purified with tablets from the ship. "Avon, you'd better be right that this stuff isn't poisonous."

"Don't trust me, trust science. I downloaded the geo—the planetographical data—from the computer system," Avon said. "What did you call it—Zen?"

"Oh, yes?" Vila said. "The one that said that everything that used to be alive tasted like chicken—whatever that is when it's at home—and everything that didn't tasted like spinach?"

I assigned Jenna, Vila and Avon to clean up after supper (and a better meal it was than many Vila and I had had in the Domes). After K-P duty, the other three sat down to a game of pinochle. Blake and I took the little computer. Avon, complaining as usual, had downloaded some of the basic Freedom Party ideological documents. Blake and I were studying Djargo's "Primer for Revolution."

"It means a lot to me, your support," I told Blake. "An educated man like you, you'll be able to make speeches that would just leave me tongue-tied."

"Awww, you can just say he's you," Vila said. "They probably can't tell one big bloke with curly hair from another anyway."

"I'd be honored to contribute to Gan's legend," Blake said. I was touched. Poor Blake—in a sense, I felt somewhat responsible for his plight, He and his wife Althea had been on their way to an opera performance, and by sheer bad luck they crossed the path of a peaceful demonstration that was being fired on by troopers. Althea was killed instantly by a ricochet, and…of course Blake wasn't in his right mind when that happened, and if the man he killed hadn't been a trooper, he would have got off with only a year or so in a Reeducation Centre.

"Here," Vila said, handing me one of the healing pads from the ship. "You must have one of your heads, what with all that stuff you've been spouting off to Blake." Well, yes, my Limiter **is** a bother, but what can't be cured must be endured, eh? And I can only be grateful that they chose that option rather than making me a martyr. "Thanks!" I said. "I think we make a good team."

"Well, hooray for us," Avon said. I was tempted to just **leave** him somewhere, but it wouldn't be fair. He's a bright man, but really, he could get himself brutally beaten by a Girl Guide.

"Jenna, once you're sure we've shaken off those pursuers, we'll set a course for Saurian Major," I said. "We've plenty of room for the entire rebel garrison, and more." With a battalion of properly trained revolutionary fighters, what couldn't I achieve?


End file.
